Page:Weeds (1923).pdf/181

 He was a bit clumsy looking, but on the whole sound and healthy in appearance.

The stranger's horse was a beautiful cream colored mare with large, intelligent eyes, small ears, a gracefully arched neck and slim yet strong looking legs, the very perfection indeed of shape and proportion. Not even a track horse could be daintier in appearance. Uncle Sam tried to look at the animal with disdainful indifference; but for all his experience in the art of dissimulation, he could not keep out of his eyes a covert gleam that glinted of admiration and coveteousness.

"I'd suttenly never dream o' lettin' her go under a hundred," the young trader was saying. "But I jes can't take her a step fu'ther 'ithout shoes, an' I hain't got the money to git her shoes. I've had hard luck lately, stranger. Gawd, what hard luck I've had! Many a time this past month my three babies hain't had all they cud eat; an' me an' my wife has gone hungry fer days together. The two linin's o' my pocket has got to know each other good these past weeks. Lookit the shoes I got on, willyuh? I can't git shoes fer myse'f, let alone fer the mare."

Uncle Sam looked down at the shoes and saw that they were badly scuffed and that the young man's foot was bulging from a slit in the leather on the side of one of them. A good deal of the stitching on the other one had come loose; and it was laced with a shaggy scrap of binder twine. Whether the soles were through or not Uncle Sam could not see.

"An' lookit my shirt. It's the on'y shirt I got, I swear it is; an' it hain't a-goin' to cover my nakedness much longer."

He turned around with a broad grin and showed a long slit over the shoulder blade, through which his healthy, sun-browned skin shone with a satiny sheen.

"Naw, even if she didn't have nothin' the matter with her feet, the mare's too light. I hain't got no youst fer her."

Uncle Sam took a sidewise step, spat over the edge of the curb, and made as if to jump into the saddle.

"I tell yuh, an' I'd swear it on the Holy Book, there hain't a thing the matter with them there front feet. The poor beast's